Rich Person’s Resistance in the Trump Administration

On September 5, 2018, The New York Times published an editorial by an anonymous Trump administration official that accuses President Donald Trump of being amoral, erratic, unstable, petty, ineffective and anti-democratic. The writer claims that, fortunately, there are many people in the White House and elsewhere in the federal government who do what they can to save the country by running the U.S. government in a proper manner.

Most of the media coverage of this editorial has focused either on how scary it is to have a president who is clearly unfit for the job or on the hunt by Trump and his allies to figure out who wrote the piece. But there is another aspect of the editorial that is disturbing. These inside “resistors” attempt to portray themselves as patriots who are trying to save America by being “adults in the room.” But the anonymous official and other insiders have an agenda that is not as patriotic as they make it out to be. Here is the key line in the article that makes clear their real agenda: “There are bright spots that the near-ceaseless negative coverage of the administration fails to capture: effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.”

Let’s be clear: Trump’s deregulation actions are “effective” only if you are a big business owner or, preferably, the CEO or member of the board of directors of a large corporation or financial institution. Historic tax reform? The overwhelming majority of those savings went to the rich and super-rich. A more robust military? Good news if you’re a weapons maker or another kind of military contractor. But out in the field and around the world, I have yet to notice any significant positive change. Indeed, the military under Trump is barely distinguishable from the military under Barack Obama.

The anonymous Trump administration official appears to support Donald Trump’s general agenda of helping the richest Americans and ignoring everyone else. What worries the writer is not that Trump is failing “to put country first,” but that he is so emotionally disturbed that he will somehow screw up this corporatist agenda.

-David Wallechinsky

Comments

jim carter
5 months ago

WHO BENEFITS from the ‘insiders’ Resistance ?? It is submitted to profit Wall Street. Wall Street (the TBTF banks) have set foreign policy and initiated all wars since 1890; have initiated coups worldwide using the IMF, WB, CIA, US military, and State
Department to install puppet rulers so their nation can be exploited; and how they have financed them by theft from the US government is detailed at https://www.scribd.com/document/393590682/ ...with a way YOU CAN RESIST.

Paul Glover
8 months ago

Yes, the ruling class is whitewashing the White House. Some by making Trump appear innocent, some by pushing Trump out. Those who want to protect him are those who want to pivot toward Russia. Those who want to get rid of him want to maintain the Cold
War status quo. Liberals used to want peace with Russia, and protested NAFTA and WTO. Now that Trump agrees liberals switch sides because Trump is a crude racist misogynist.

Miguel Gatos
8 months ago

These sniveling pseudo patriots (like "anonymous") want it both ways. They want the power obtained by a political appointment and the riches that flow their way after they leave. Yet they seek cover as "resisters" promising they're really working to protect
us from Trump. They are no different than the Trump voters who willing overlook Trump's vile nature and moral dysfunction because they like what he's doing -- even as he demonstrates his willingness to provoke a constitutional crisis for his own venal ends.